Haas protests Force India over chassis design

Haas protests Force India over chassis design

Haas has protested Force India ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in regards to the team’s use of a car that a previous entrant built.

Force India was accepted as a new entrant in Formula 1 during the summer after the previous team went into administration, with ‘Racing Point Force India’ purchasing the assets. As a result, the previous Force India team was excluded from the constructors’ championship and the new team only started scoring points from the Belgian Grand Prix onwards.

As part of Force India’s re-entry, the majority of teams agreed to allow the team to inherit the previous entrant’s constructors’ prize money. However, Haas — having not been entitled to certain payments until it had completed three years in F1 as a new entrant — argues the new Force India team should follow the same rules it has had to.

Should Force India not receive the prize money, those funds would be divided up among the remaining teams.

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The issue has dragged on since August, and Haas has now protested the legality of both the Force Indias that are due to race in Abu Dhabi, with it understood the protest relates to the car’s IP belonging to the previous entrant and the VJM11 not being built by the new Racing Point Force India itself.

Appendix 6 of the F1 Sporting Regulations states: “A competitor shall, in respect of the Listed Parts to be used in its cars in Formula 1, only use Listed Parts which are designed by it”.

Force India team representatives are required to report to the stewards at on Friday morning at the Yas Marina Circuit in relation to the protest.

Haas declined to comment on Thursday evening in Abu Dhabi, while the FIA will only reveal further details of the matter following a decision from the stewards.

Chris Medland

While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor.
Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, he contributes to BBC 5Live and Sky Sports in the UK as well as working with titles in Japan and the Middle East.